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Take a dance with danger, promenade into peril, take a hike through hazard and amble into action. Yes folks, all this naff bipedal punning should tell you that the cartwheeling, crawling, climbing Strider is at it again! So is it a wander on the wild side, or just a walk in the park?

With the current feeling of goodwill between East and West, Perestroika and Glasnost running rife, poor old Strider - once the scourge of the KGB and the most feared man in Russia - was pretty much out of a job. Left to perform cartwheels in his back yard and to practise slicing potatoes into strange and interesting shapes with one blow of his mighty blade, he was bored stiff.

But just as he was all set to call it a day, and prematurely retire himself to that eight-way scrolling battleground in the sky, along comes salvation in the shape of a fierce alien race who gate-crash their way through the ozone (or what's left of it) snatch up a world leader (a nice female, as it 'appens) and whisk her off to the planet Magenta for some unexplained but probably devious reason. Horrors!

"Hurrah!" cries Stridey. "ET... I mean, how terrible! I shall go to her rescue immediately." And so he boldly trudges off to indulge in some aggro and do over a few aliens just for the fun of it (and to the stirring anthem of the Strider soundtrack).

Having landed on the planet surface, Strider has five different areas to breach before reaching the woman, making a rescue bid and returning to Earth for the glory and large amounts of money. Each area is spread over many screens both horizontally and vertically, so Strider's gymnastic capabilities are brought to the fore yet again in order to traverse the aliens' domain. As well as Spiderman-like wall-crawling abilities and girlie-impressing mid-air cartwheel, he's also added rope and chain-climbing to his athletic arsenal.

The action comes thick and fast right from the start, and Striderman has to contend with footsoldiers taking potshots at his person and flying birds which attempt to headbutt him! Every contact reduces our hero's lifemeter and, when it disappears, that's another one of his three Strider lives gone.

To despatch the more straightforward adversaries, Strider's not averse to whipping out his flashing blade; although specific mid- and end-of-level guardians require a taste of his gyro-laser gun before popping their rivets.

And if this isn't enough, Strider's gone and slid a further trick up his sleeve, in the ability to change into a robot. There are a number of small blue icons scattered around each area. The more icons you collect, the longer Strider can remain as Stridebot, and the better his chances of coming out of the end-of-level scrap in one piece!

This end-of-level duels aren't quite as formidable as they sound, though. The robot simply trundles about from side to side and, while the nasties are large, they have limited animation (like none, in some cases). They aren't as fearsome or as impressive as they could have been.

The mazey aspect of the gameplay may not be to everybodys taste, since on later levels it can involve a fair bit of mapping in order to find and collect all the icons. Alternatively, you can wander around getting horribly lost and acting as target practice for the hordes of nasties patrolling the area!

Mind you, at least there's some nice scenery to have a gawp at, and while it lacks something of the variety and detail of Strider I, each playing area is huge much bigger than the original. Stridey has also lost his nice hi-res outline, making him a lot chunkier and less well defined, but at least he moves a lot faster and the scenery scrolls more smoothly.

After the wonderful arcade exploits of the first game, Strider Il is slightly disappointing. Rather than try that little bit harder to squeeze in all the wonderful coin-op graphics and precision arcade gameplay, the game is reduced to "search the maze and shoot the baddies" - but with knobs on.

While still technically brilliant, Strider II doesn't quite deliver the punch and variety of the original. Only the later levels live up to the promise of Strider's first outing. Even so, it's certainly worth a crack and I've no doubt that it still find a sizeable audience. Stroll on.

1. Guardians are a disappointing climax to each level.
2. Gameplay is reduced to simplistic search 'n shoot format.
3. Sprites are plain and blocky.

1. Massive, smooth scrolling playing areas, require exploration and even mapping.
2. Each level is visually varied with nicely drawn and, later on, spookily atmospheric graphics.
3. Strider character is wonderfully agile and easy to control
4. Nice 'n meaty spot effects and classic Strider soundtrack.
5. Simple maze designs mean that a wrong turn early on isn't necessarily disastrous.
6. Later levels are a more interesting and testing challenge.